Norman R. Shapiro is Distinguished Professor of Literary Translation and Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Wesleyan University. He is also Writer in Residence at Adams House,
Harvard University. Among his many award-winning translations are Four Farces by Georges Feydeau (University of Chicago Press), nominated for a National Book Award; The Fabulists French: Verse
Fables of Nine Centuries (University of Illinois Press), named Distinguished Book of the Year by the American Literary Translators Association; One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine,
recipient of the MLA’s Scaglione Prize; and Charles Baudelaire: Selected Poems from "Les Fleurs du mal," the last two published by Chicago Press. He has also published the
Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (University of Illinois Press), recipient of the Lewis Galantière Prize, and a volume of La Fontaine's Contes (Black Widow Press). Other translations
include Lyrics of the French Renaissance (Yale University Press), The Comedy of Eros: Medieval French Guides to the Art of Love (University of Illinois Press),
and Nine Centuries of French
Women Poets (Johns Hopkins University Press). Recent volumes include poetry collections of Théophile Gautier (in Yale’s Margellos World Republic of Letters series), Anna de Noailles, Jacques
Prévert, Cécile Périn, and eminent Belgian poet Pierre Coran (Black Widow Press) as well as Fe-Lines: French Cat Poems through the Ages (University of Illinois Press). Long a specialist in
French-African and Caribbean literature, he has several collections to his credit, including a number in Louisiana French poetry and theater, among the latter a verse translation of Victor Séjour’s
romantic tragedy The Jew of Seville (“Diégarias”). He is also the author of several collections of French farce by a variety of 19th-century playwrights.

You ...

When you were but the merest tot,
Babbling in cowering awkwardness,
When you were only fresh-begot,
Flesh of my flesh, I loved you less ...
What are you now? I scarce know what.

You are Yourself, not part of me:
So little mine, the soul within,
I cannot pierce your mystery!
Be beautiful, be good! Yes, be
Everything I could not have been.

I placed my desperate hopes upon
Your childhood ... Light of heart, as then,
Joys will be born anew, anon,
As when you gave them birth. Though gone
Life holds them fast, to come again ...

You are this, you are that ... Ah yes ...
You are our fruit of twofold race,
Who, with each step, bear off, caress
Against your breast, a bit of space.
You are this, you are that ... Ah yes ...

He bought a lion that
He painted green, and he,
Decked out in mauve ... Whereat,
Explorer and said cat
Roamed the world, roving free ...
When home he comes—worn out
From gadding roundabout—
No one spouts righteous awe
To see his pupil feast
On him, and eat him raw!
Some, though, pity the beast,
Distressed—distraught—to see
Man's needless cruelty:
Poor hungry creature! Why,
Assassin on the sly,
Kill him summarily?
"Animal rights!" they cry,
Ranting bolder and bolder ...

Imagine, ma petite,
Dear sister mine, how sweet
Were we to go and take our pleasure
Leisurely, you and I—
To lie, to love, to die
Off in that land made to your measure!
A land whose suns' moist rays,
Through the skies' misty haze,
Hold quite the same dark charms for me
As do your scheming eyes
When they, in their like wise,
Shine through your tears, perfidiously.

There all is order, naught amiss:
Comfort and beauty, calm and bliss.

Treasure galore—ornate,
Time-glossed—would decorate
Our chamber, where the rarest blooms
Would blend their lavish scent,
Heady and opulent,
With wisps of amber-like perfumes;
Where all the Orient's
Splendid, rich ornaments—
Deep mirrors, ceilings fine—would each,
In confidential tone,
Speak to the soul alone
In its own sweet and secret speech.

There all is order, naught amiss:
Comfort and beauty, calm and bliss.

See how the ships, asleep—
They who would ply the deep!—
Line the canals: to satisfy
Your merest whim they come
From far-flung heathendom
And skim the seven seas. —On high,
The sunset's rays enfold
In hyacinth and gold,
Field and canal; and, with the night,
As shadows gently fall,
Behold! Life sleeps, and all
Lies bathed in warmth and evening light.